Monday 14th 270 AD was quite a day for Bishop Valentine of Interamna (now Terni in Umbria), for on that day, in Rome, he was stoned to death and then beheaded on the orders of Emperor Claudius II Gothicus.

Thanks to the British Empire and laterly the rise of the American hegemony English is pretty much THE World language. By some estimates the English language has more than a million words and it’s generally agreed that no other language has nearly as many. So you would think that English must have a word for everything, right? No – Not even close. In this article we look at some words in other languages that just seem to defy...

Boomerangs are commonly thought to be the invention of Aboriginal Australians but over the years they have turned up at archaeological sites as far apart as Arizona and India with the oldest known specimen, around 23,000 years old, but how do they fly ?

Christmas is probably the time of year when there is an overwhelming plethora of traditions and practices that we all enthusiastically embrace. In this article we look at one of the most enduring of British traditions … the Christmas Turkey.

There’s one particular Christmas Carol that continues to baffle people – “The Twleve days of Christmas”. What in the world do ‘leaping lords’, ‘French hens’,’swimming-swans’ and especially the partridge who won’t come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?

Christmas is traditionally also known as “Yuletide”. Indeed the lyric from “Deck the Halls” goes “Troll the ancient yuletide carol.” Amidst all the fa-la-la-ing, did you ever ask yourself exactly what yuletide is?

Christmas is a traditionally a time for family fun and games so why not try out this London Underground game. See how many London tube stations you can guess from this cryptic graphic we found on the internet.

Eponyms are one of the most fascinating examples of how the English language gains new words. In this article we take a colourful look at the phenomenon some eponyms like : Chauvinist , Draconoian, Hooligan, John Hancock & Mentor.

Astronauts first moved into the International Space Station in October 2000 and since then they have been supplied with oxygen created by a process discovered by the chemist William Nicholson over 200 years ago : Electrolysis

If you’re a football fan then you’ll be able to relate to the agonies of watching penalty shootouts when used to decide a game. But does a goalie ever stand a chance and what can he do to help himself ?

Did the American’s hi-jack the English language and have applied what seems, on the face of it, some rather arbitary descions to spell various words differently. Why remove the U from words like colour? In this article we look at the rather querky reasons for this.

Search

GUERN 8 DVD – Now on Sale

Buy it on-line today at the special offer price of £4.99. You can also back order issues of the previous Guern DVDs for £9.99 each.ALSOThe Guern 9 : The Best of 10 years – A Selection of questions from all 8 DVDs plus 30 brand new bonus questions.